


dream a little dream of me

by Serie11



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Beaches, Dreams, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Post-Kingdom Hearts III, SoRiKai Week 2020, Sora Lives (Kingdom Hearts)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:08:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25700353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/pseuds/Serie11
Summary: “Sorry,” Sora apologises, feeling horrible. He’s been slipping, bad enough that Riku can use his weird dreameater powers to tell that something is wrong. It’s all just too much. This is why he avoids thinking about it. It’s a rabbit hole that he doesn’t want to acknowledge, let alone go down.Sorikai week day 1:Hurt/Comfort|Dreams
Relationships: Kairi/Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 53
Collections: Sorikai Week





	dream a little dream of me

**Author's Note:**

> Done for Sorikai week 2020 Day 1: **Hurt/Comfort | Dreams**
> 
> [Sorikai week twiter](https://twitter.com/sorikaiweek)

Sora wakes with a gasp.

There’s nothing but darkness – in front of him, all around him. Panicked, he summons his Keyblade, and the light that comes from it shows him where he is.

His room.

Slowly, his breathing settles. His heart still pounds in his ears, eerily loud in the otherwise quiet space. He sets his Keyblade on his lap and runs his hands through his hair before covering his face with them. As if that will protect him from anything.

When he slips out of bed and crosses to his window, he can barely see out there either. It’s a new moon tonight, and even the silver tipped waves of the ocean have become ink dark. There’s no hope of him seeing out to the play island in the middle of a night like this. A part of him itches to go, to glide across the shallow water or to take a boat from the shore and row it over. He doesn’t know if it’s the heart of the world pulling at him and his Keyblade, or if it’s a remnant from the last time he was on the islands, and looking out this window set him on a path that he never could have predicted.

He checks the time. Just past two. Hours before anyone will be up, even his father who crab fishes for a living, and checks the first traps at dawn. Maybe people who work in one of the few bakeries on the main island might be stirring, to start kneading bread and putting loaves in the oven to sell later in the day. Maybe some people are sneaking home after a late night party, or a quiet rendezvous with a paramour. He can’t think of many more reasons for people to be up. Reasons that he could justify his presence with, if someone were to see him. Reasons other than not being able to sleep.

He fists a hand in his hair and resists the urge to dig out his gummi phone from the pants that he wore today. Twilight Town is on a slightly different time zone, about five hours behind the Destiny Islands. Roxas and Xion are likely still awake, but if he texted them, they would know that it’s the middle of the night here. Further afield, the Land of Departure is about six hours ahead of the islands, and Aqua at the very least would be up. She might even understand – the few times that he’s stayed over at the Land of Departure, he’s never seen her sleep, but he has encountered her roaming the halls in the middle of the night.

Still, he doesn’t need to bother Aqua. She has enough problems with her own sleeping schedule without dealing with his as well. Surely, if he just goes back to bed and closes his eyes, he’ll go to sleep with no problems.

He stares at his bed and can’t make himself move towards it.

It’s not just that he has bad dreams – they’re made all the worse by the fact that most of the time, he’s reliving _things that happened_ , either to himself or to someone that he cares about. Watching Kairi get ripped to pieces, or Riku standing alone against a horde of darkness, or Aqua being enveloped and consumed, or Ventus sleeping and unable to be woken. Of himself, softly falling deeper and deeper into the welcoming dark, Xehanort’s whisper in his ears encouraging him not to struggle. When he’s awake, he can distract himself, and talk and laugh and ignore the writhing problems at the back of his mind. When he’s alone, in the dark – well, it’s a lot harder.

He sits, and lies down. This isn’t the first night that he’s spent like this, and he doesn’t think that it’s going to be the last. The only thing he can do is try to wait it out. Eventually, the nightmares will stop, won’t they?

* * *

“Hey Sora,” Riku says. They came back to the islands in full summer – everyone is on vacation from school. Sora still isn’t sure what year exactly he’s going to go back in, or if he’s going to go back at all. Keyblade wielder is pretty much a full-time occupation, and it’s not like he’s not needed, or that he’ll lack for work anytime soon. Even so, Aqua has dismissed them all back to their worlds, and had strongly encouraged them to finish their education. She and Terra are helping Ventus, and he supposes that going back to school should have some benefit. Right?

“Hm?” he asks. They’re on the beach, and watching as Kairi and Selphie beat Tidus and Wakka in their latest volleyball match. Kairi had told them that she and Selphie had grown ever closer after the islands were restored and Sora and Riku never came back, and all of them have played beach sports together for longer than Sora can remember. It’d been easy, when they’d come down to the sand today, to see the two boys and ask if they wanted to play a game or three with them.

“Weird question,” Riku starts. “But…”

They wince as Kairi hits a ball and Tidus fumbles it right into his face. Kairi lets out a whoop and then sticks her tongue out at the boys as she and Selphie hi-five.

“What?” Sora asks.

“Have you been dreaming lately?”

Sora freezes, and then tries to unfreeze, bringing a hand up casually to half shield his face from Riku’s gaze while leaning back, making a spectacular fumble of his own as he tries to find the right words to deflect Riku’s question. “Um, sometimes. You know, you go to sleep and you dream. About anything in particular?”

Riku is quiet for another few minutes as Kairi and Selphie gain another few points and then win their match. Sora gratefully swaps out with the losing team, and he bounces the volleyball up and down a few times in his hands before serving it over the net. Kairi and Selphie have obviously been working and playing together for a while now, and Sora can’t really remember the last time he played seriously, but he works together well with Riku and the two of them know how to reach each other’s movements easily. It helps that he’s at the peak level of athleticism that he’s ever been in his life – Riku too, probably.

Still, volleyball is a game of rules and points, and Kairi and Selphie win in the end. The girls swap out with Tidus and Wakka, and the four boys go at each other, trying to one up each other. Having had a practise run and also being reminded of the rules, Riku and Sora win this time, to Tidus and Wakka’s chagrin.

“Aw man,” Wakka complains. “We really aren’t doing too well here!”

“Kairi, Selphie, let’s go again,” Tidus demands. “We’ll beat you this time!”

They switch out, Kairi letting Tidus serve first. They watch them hit the ball back and forth a few times before Riku speaks again, startling Sora. His voice is low enough that there’s no way for the other four to hear them over the sounds of the beach and the game.

“Nightmares, I mean,” Riku says, and Sora scrambles to catch up to the thread of the conversation, thinking that Riku had dropped it.

“Sometimes,” Sora allows. “I mean. Don’t you?”

Riku bows his head. “No,” he finally admits. “I don’t dream anymore. Not since we came back from the realm of sleep.”

“Oh,” Sora says, stumped. “Really? Not at all?”

“Not at all. But sometimes it feels like when I was in your dreams… something calling to me. Maybe I’m just imagining things.” He shakes his head.

Sora swallows, mouth dry. He doesn’t know how to tell Riku that he has bad dreams more often than he doesn’t, and that he almost dreads his bed. Sora used to be a sleep sodden child, always yawning and ready to run to his room as soon as he could. Now he stays up until his eyes droop and he has to drag himself to bed.

“You might still have some dreameater powers left over,” Sora says hesitantly. “Maybe there’s some sort of affect that we don’t know about yet? You could still be feeling what I dream. And you were there to protect me from nightmares, so it makes sense that you might be able to still feel them.”

“Maybe,” Riku says. “Can I come over tonight? We can talk more about it then.”

A thrill of unease shoots up his spine, but Sora doesn’t want to say no – not when Riku is his boyfriend, and not when it’ll make Riku certain that something is wrong. So instead he nods, and Riku hums, and they watch Kairi and Selphie kick Tidus and Wakka’s butts.

* * *

Riku knocks on his window after dark that night. It’s past time when Sora’s parents have retired, and so have most of the other islanders have as well. There’s few street lights on the main island – a few on the main street, where most of the shops are, and where Kairi’s house is. Sora’ house is on the edge of the sand that creeps up from the beach, the pier where his father’s boat is just a minute’s walk away.

Sora’s room is on the second floor, but that is hardly going to slow Riku down. He carefully wedges open his window, unsure how far it can really open. Riku squirms inside when he can, and the two of them negotiate for space good naturedly as he does.

Sora closes the window, trying to do it as quietly as he can. Just because his parents are on the other side of the house, doesn’t mean he needs to tempt them coming up to inquire as to why there’s strange sounds coming from his room. They’re paranoid enough already without fuelling that fire.

“Good afternoon?” Riku asks, trailing his fingers on the wall as he walks around the room. Sora wonders what he sees – really, this place hasn’t changed much over the years. Maybe a bit more clutter around is the bits and pieces from his synthesising attempts, and the books that Aqua gives them about the history of Keyblade wielders, but there’s still the tools of his soap making hobby, and discarded clothes from yesterday that Sora hasn’t gotten around to putting in the wash yet.

“It’s night time,” Sora tells him.

Riku clears his throat. “Er – yeah. Sorry, I just haven’t been back in here in…” He trails off, obviously trying to think of when he actually was here last. Eventually, he just goes around the room, peering at what has changed and what hasn’t. 

Riku lingers with a hand on the back of Sora’s desk chair, before spinning it around and sitting in it. “So – tell me what’s up with you?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

Riku rests his head in his palms. “Come on, Sora. We know that there’s something up that you’re not telling us.”

Sora turns away so he won’t have to look at Riku, and so that Riku won’t have to see his face. “What, do you and Kairi have… gossip sessions about me now?”

He winces as soon as he’s said it. Riku sighs.

“If you want to call us talking about our boyfriend gossip sessions, then sure, that’s what we’re doing. Kairi and I can tell that you’re bothered by something – you know that we would help if we can, right?”

Sora resists the urge to tell him that there’s no way that he can help, which is why he hasn’t said anything. “I know,” he says instead. “I just don’t want to bother the two of you.”

“You’re not bothering us,” Riku says. “Come on. Sit down.”

Sora sits heavily on the end of his bed.

“It’s just,” he starts, and then doesn’t know how to keep going.

On the gummi ship, he had to bottle everything bad up inside him. It helped, a little, when they were fighting – he could vent his frustration and anger and helplessness on the Heartless. But they had to smile, to laugh, to get the ship going, and they didn’t have any time for delays. They never did, and he never really had a chance to work through everything. Even from all the way back then, that terror of waking up in a new world for the first time, the fear of facing the Heartless for the first time, the confusion and heart wrenching anxiety of seeing his two best friends disappear in front of him when their world was falling apart. Let alone everything that has happened since then!

“Hey,” Riku says softly.

“Sorry,” Sora apologises, feeling horrible. He’s been slipping, bad enough that Riku can use his weird dreameater powers to tell that something is wrong, and he’s been kind and good enough to reach out to him and ask what’s wrong, and Sora can’t even tell him. He knows that Riku doesn’t have to sleep as much as he used to, but surely this is a waste of his time.

“You don’t have to apologise for anything,” Riku tells him. He stands up from the chair and comes and sits next to Sora.

Sora throws his hands up in the air. “I just don’t even know where to start,” he complains. It’s all just too much. This is why he avoids thinking about it. It’s a rabbit hole that he doesn’t want to acknowledge, let alone go down.

“Why don’t we start with what you were dreaming about,” Riku suggests.

Sora barely bites back the urge to ask which time. The most recent, and most common, dream of his is easy to say. “It was about when Xehanort dragged me down to the depths of sleep. About falling and never being able to wake up.” That sinking, clinging darkness is something that Riku will probably understand, too.

“Hm,” Riku says. He puts his hand, palm up, on his leg. An invitation. Sora isn’t sure if he can take it.

“I’m just tired of being tired,” Sora admits. “It’s not fair. I thought everything was supposed to be over?”

“It’s not often that simple,” Riku tells him. “I had a lot of time to think, while you were asleep and Naminé was restoring your memories. A lot of time to get over my anger and my shame.” He flashes a smile at him. “Or at least, to acknowledge it. You’re still catching up on time, you know.”

“Still?” Sora looks up at the ceiling, flopping back on his bed. “But so much has happened since then.”

“Exactly,” Riku says. “You’ve never had the chance to breathe, and let it all out. It’s just been building, and building, and building. That’s no way to live. Now that we’re finally just hanging out at home, you can’t ignore it for any longer.”

Sora doesn’t say anything for a long time. He knows that he’s been keeping things from Riku and Kairi. He knows that there’s a lot that he’s dealing with. But just because Riku says that he should be able to face it now, doesn’t mean he knows how to. Or that he wants to.

“Can’t it just go away?” Sora asks.

“No,” Riku says kindly. He lies down on the bed next to him. “I thought it would go away. But even back then, I was still scared all the time. Worried about you, and if you would ever wake up. Naminé was pretty good at being there to bounce my thoughts off of. Even if most of the time I was mostly angrily silent at her. I’m getting off track.” He rolls onto his side so he can face Sora. Sora resolutely keeps staring at the ceiling.

“No, keep going,” Sora says. “You never talk about that year.”

“I guess that’s another problem,” Riku sighs. “I need to talk about this stuff more too. And Kairi – you don’t think that year was a breeze for her either, do you?”

“No,” Sora says. “I know that she was confused all the time, and mad that she couldn’t remember me, and scared for you. I got the easy way out, huh?”

“No, you didn’t,” Riku says seriously. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Sora. You never got a break. You never got time to process. Not like we did.”

His ceiling still looks the same as it has for his whole life. There’s the paint in the corner which is peeling off slightly, which his mum keeps saying that they need to re-paint. The bit by the window that always gets the sun on it is slightly faded compared to the rest. It doesn’t seem fair, that it could not change at all, and yet he’s right here, completely different.

“Then how do I do it?” Sora asks. “How do I make everything better again?”

“Wanting to get better is the first step,” Riku says quietly. “And I’ve talked about this with Mickey before – he says that he knows a few people who specialise in helping with stuff like this. I’ve been meaning to follow him up on it, but there never seemed to be the right time.”

“Would you go with me?” Sora asks.

“Yeah,” Riku agrees firmly. “And we can bring Kairi along too. Date night decided.”

Sora wrinkles up his nose. “Um… not sure this counts as a date.”

“Anything can be a date if you say it is,” Riku tells him. “Besides, helping each other out and improving ourselves as people? Sounds like a great day out.”

Sora finally rolls over to punch him gently. Riku throws an arm over him, and Sora shuffles closer slightly. With Riku holding him close, everything already feels a bit better. Sora’s faced down harder challenges than this, surely. With Riku and Kairi by his side, he can do anything. He repeats that to himself a few times, swallowing. It’s okay to feel nervous. He just has to act anyway.

“Riku?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. For everything.”

Riku’s hand moves over his back gently. Sora lets his eyes flutter shut at the comforting touch.

“Don’t worry about it,” Riku murmurs. “That’s what boyfriends are for.”

“You’re the best boyfriend ever,” Sora says sleepily. Riku laughs, and pulls him in closer. Sora presses his forehead against his chest, and thinks that he might be able to rest now.


End file.
